The tragedy of choice

 "To me, there is not only right or wrong, but many shades in between. The real tragedies in life are not in choices between right and wrong. Only the most callous of persons chose what they know to be wrong. Real tragedy comes in a dilemma of evaluating what is right. Real dilemmas are difficulties of the soul, provoking agonies, which you in your world of black and white can't even begin to comprehend."

Nial Ferguson has quoted Henry Kissinger from a 1948 letter to his parents during his magisterial LSE lecture The Grand Strategy of Detente. I've been a fan of Kissinger's analysis ever since reading A World Restored way back in university, and this as yet apparently unpublished quotation reflects his approach very well indeed. Ferguson's lecture is a must-watch video, as I am sure his book on Kissinger is going to be mandatory reading when it appears in a few years' time.